The Rape is supposed to have occurred in the early history of Rome, shortly after its founding by Romulus and his mostly male followers. Seeking wives in order to found families, the Romans negotiated unsuccessfully with the Sabines, who populated the area. Fearing the emergence of a rival society, the Sabines refused to allow their women to marry the Romans. Consequently, the Romans planned to abduct Sabine women, during a festival of Neptune Equester and proclaimed the festival among Rome's neighbours. According to Livy, many people from Rome's neighbours including folk from the Caeninenses, Crustumini, and Antemnates, and many of the Sabines attended. At the festival Romulus gave a signal, at which the Romans grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. The indignant abductees were soon implored by Romulus to accept Roman husbands.

Livy claims no direct sexual assault took place, albeit when compared with the later history, the fuller evidence was a seduction based on promises by the Romans (which were inadequate, in any event) and then betrayal of the Romans' promises. Livy says Romulus offered them free choice and promised civic and property rights to women. According to Livy, Romulus spoke to them each in person, declaring "that what was done was owing to the pride of their fathers, who had refused to grant the privilege of marriage to their neighbours; but notwithstanding, they should be joined in lawful wedlock, participate in all their possessions and civil privileges, and, than which nothing can be dearer to the human heart, in their common children."[2] Responsibility of the men for meeting the needs of the children thus conceived was not included.

Outraged at the occurrence, the king of the Caeninenses entered upon Roman territory with his army. Romulus and the Romans met the Caeninenses in battle, killed their king, and routed their army. Romulus later attacked Caenina and took it upon the first assault. Returning to Rome, he dedicated a temple to Jupiter Feretrius (according to Livy, the first temple dedicated in Rome) and offered the spoils of the enemy king as spolia opima. According to the Fasti Triumphales, Romulus celebrated a triumph over the Caeninenses on 1 March 752 BC.[3]

At the same time, the army of the Antemnates invaded Roman territory. The Romans retaliated, and the Antemnates were defeated in battle and their town captured. According to the Fasti Triumphales, Romulus celebrated a second triumph in 752 BC over the Antemnates.

The Crustumini also started a war, but they too were defeated and their town captured.

Roman colonists subsequently were sent to Antemnae and Crustumerium by Romulus, and many citizens of those towns also migrated to Rome (particularly the families of the captured women).

The Sabines themselves finally declared war, led into battle by their king, Titus Tatius. Tatius almost succeeded in capturing Rome, thanks to the treason of Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius, governor of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill. She opened the city gates for the Sabines in return for "what they bore on their arms", thinking she would receive their golden bracelets. Instead, the Sabines crushed her to death with their shields, and her body was thrown from a rock known ever since by her name, the Tarpeian Rock.

The Romans attacked the Sabines, who now held the citadel. The Roman advance was led by Hostus Hostilius, the Sabine defence by Mettus Curtius. Hostus fell in battle, and the Roman line gave way, They retreated to the gate of the Palatium. Romulus rallied his men by promising to build a temple to Jupiter Stator on the site. He then led them back into battle. Mettus Curtius was unhorsed and fled on foot, and the Romans appeared to be winning.

At this point, however, the Sabine women intervened:

[They], from the outrage on whom the war originated, with hair dishevelled and garments rent, the timidity of their sex being overcome by such dreadful scenes, had the courage to throw themselves amid the flying weapons, and making a rush across, to part the incensed armies, and assuage their fury; imploring their fathers on the one side, their husbands on the other, "that as fathers-in-law and sons-in-law they would not contaminate each other with impious blood, nor stain their offspring with parricide, the one their grandchildren, the other their children. If you are dissatisfied with the affinity between you, if with our marriages, turn your resentment against us; we are the cause of war, we of wounds and of bloodshed to our husbands and parents. It were better that we perish than live widowed or fatherless without one or other of you."[4]

The battle came to an end, and the Sabines agreed to unite in one nation with the Romans. Titus Tatius jointly ruled with Romulus until Tatius's death five years later.

The new Sabine residents of Rome settled on the Capitoline Hill, which they had captured in the battle.[5]

The subject was popular during the Renaissance as symbolising the importance of marriage for the continuity of families and cultures. It was also an example of a battle subject in which the artist could demonstrate his skill in depicting female as well as male figures in extreme poses, with the added advantage of a sexual theme. It was depicted regularly on 15th-century Italian cassoni and later in larger paintings. A comparable opportunity from the New Testament was afforded by the theme of the Massacre of the Innocents.

The sculpture by Giambologna (1579–1583) that was reinterpreted as expressing this theme depicts three figures (a man lifting a woman into the air while a second man crouches) and was carved from a single block of marble. This sculpture is considered Giambologna's masterpiece[6] Originally intended as nothing more than a demonstration of the artist's ability to create a complex sculptural group, its subject matter, the legendary rape of the Sabines, had to be invented after Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, decreed that it be put on public display in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria, Florence. True to mannerist densely packed, intertwined figural compositions and ambitious overinclusive efforts, the statue renders a dynamic panoply of emotions, in poses that offer multiple viewpoints. When contrasted with the serene single-viewpoint pose of the nearby Michelangelo's David, finished nearly 80 years before, this statue is infused with the dynamics that lead towards Baroque, but the tight, uncomfortable, verticality— self-imposed by the author's virtuosic restriction to a composition that could be carved from a single block of marble— lacks the diagonal thrusts that Bernini would achieve forty years later with his Rape of Proserpina and Apollo and Daphne, both at the Galleria Borghese, Rome.

The proposed site for the sculpture, opposite Benvenuto Cellini's statue of Perseus, prompted suggestions that the group should illustrate a theme related to the former work, such as the rape of Andromeda by Phineus. The respective rapes of Proserpina and Helen were also mooted as possible themes. It was eventually decided that the sculpture was to be identified as one of the Sabine virgins.

Nicolas Poussin produced two major versions of this subject, which enabled him to display to the full his unsurpassed antiquarian knowledge, together with his mastery of complicated relations of figures in dramatic encounter. One, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was executed in Rome, 1634–35. It depicts Romulus at the left giving the signal for the abduction.

The second version, of 1636–37, now at the Louvre Museum, shows that, though some of the principal figures are similar, he had not exhausted the subject. The architectural setting is more developed.

David had worked on it from 1796, when France was at war with other European nations after a period of civil conflict culminating in the Reign of Terror and the Thermidorian Reaction, during which David himself had been imprisoned as a supporter of Robespierre. After David’s estranged wife visited him in jail, he conceived the idea of telling the story, to honor his wife, with the theme being love prevailing over conflict. The painting was also seen as a plea for the people to reunite after the bloodshed of the revolution.

The Intervention of the Sabine Women

The painting depicts Romulus's wife Hersilia — the daughter of Titus Tatius, leader of the Sabines — rushing between her husband and her father and placing her babies between them. A vigorous Romulus prepares to strike a half-retreating Tatius with his spear, but hesitates. Other soldiers are already sheathing their swords.

The English 19th-century satirical painter John Leech included in his Comic History of Rome a depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women, where the women are portrayed, with a deliberate anachronism, in Victorian costume and being carried off from the "Corona et Ancora" ("Crown and Anchor", a common English pub sign in seafaring towns).

Pablo Picasso visited this theme in his several versions of the Rape of the Sabine Women (1962–63), one of which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. These are based on David's version. These conflate the beginning and end of the story, depicting the brutish Romulus and Tatius ignoring and trampling on the exposed figure of Hersilia and her child.[7]

Stephen Vincent Benét wrote a short story called "The Sobbin' Women" that parodied the legend. Later adapted into the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, it tells the story of seven gauche but sincere backwoodsmen, one of whom gets married, encouraging the others to seek partners. After a social where they meet girls they are attracted to, they are denied the chance to pursue their courtship by the latter's menfolk. Following the Roman example, they abduct the girls. As in the original tale, the women are at first indignant but are eventually won over.

The story was parodied by Lady Carlotta, the mischief-making character in Saki's short story The Schartz-Metterklume Method.[8]

In 1954, the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers used the Sabines as the basis for the unmarried 6 brothers to get wives. The song used was called "Sobbin Women" instead of "Sabine Women".

In 1962, a Spanish "sword and sandal" film based on the story was made, directed by Alberto Gout. Titled El Rapto de las Sabinas, the film was released in the USA under the titles The Rape of the Sabine Women and The Shame of the Sabine Women.

Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" features a group of all-male players offering to put on a performance of The Rape of the Sabine Women, to the disgust of the title characters.[10]

Basically, the parallels concern the presence of first-(magico-juridical) and second-(warrior) function representatives on the victorious side of a war that ultimately subdues and incorporates third function characters, for example, the Sabine women or the Norse Vanir. Indeed, the Iliad itself has also been examined in a similar light. The ultimate structure of the myth, then, is that the three estates of Proto-Indo-European society were fused only after a war between the first two against the third.[11]